College Football ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 Alliance

The Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC commissioners formalized it on Tuesday, announcing an alliance between the three leagues. But they didn’t offer much else in terms of concrete plans for the future.

Kevin Warren, George Kliavkoff and Jim Phillips spoke at length about confidence, stability and protecting the future of varsity athletics, but Tuesday’s announcement did not offer a clear path for programming, realignment or l expansion of college football qualifiers.

Instead, the group advertised the alliance as a handshake deal with the unanimous support of its members, born out of mutual appreciation among academics, sponsorship of a wide variety of Olympic sports, and the pursuit of general social justice, gender equality, diversity and inclusion.

In other words, it’s a start. Anyone can guess where things are going from here.

“There is an air of cooperation,” said one DA afterwards. “We don’t know what opportunities might arise.”

What are the objectives of the alliance?

The buzzword that defined this entire announcement was “stability,” and while the announcement included a fair amount of noble rhetoric – from nebulous planning plans to overarching goals of charting the fate of the collegiate model – the real one. objective of this group is to stabilize a list vessel.

While Phillips has spoken about his desire to avoid another round of conference realignment, Kliavkoff said the Pac-12 are still considering expansion and will announce a decision on whether to add teams by the end. of the week.

The biggest problem is the stability of the college model. The lack of national guidelines on name, image and likeness, the Alston case, the NCAA constitutional convention, the realignment, the new TV deals – it’s all part of a larger sense of uproar in the academic landscape, and the hope is that this alliance can put the brakes on how quickly change is happening.

“Building for the future had to start somewhere,” Warren said. “The [Power 5] was in a state of flux. There was great turbulence. There are three new commissioners. The NCAA took a step back and said it had to assess everything from a constitutional convention. You have a CFP expansion that was not made up of any of us in the group involved. You have the name, the image and the likeness, the Alston case, the gender equity issues, the social justice issues that we have to deal with. We’ll look back 10, 20, even 50 years, they’ll study what happened in 2020 and 2021, from the murder of George Floyd to COVID and the issues we’re talking about right now. Someone had to take the first step, and personally, for me in the Big Ten, I didn’t want to sit around and let these decisions be made by others. “

Is it really just a handshake deal?

It is no coincidence that trust has become a key topic of discussion between these three Commissioners. The lack of confidence that followed Texas and Oklahoma’s decision to join the SEC was the springboard for creating this alliance, and this is the underlying reason why other leagues are not currently involved. Kliavkoff even joked that the information surrounding the extension of the playoffs to 12 teams had not changed since the idea was first floated, but “who knows has changed” – a not-so dig subtle at SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who helped design the format while negotiating with Oklahoma and Texas.

But the main reason for the “gentleman’s agreement” is that no one really wants it to be formal. On the one hand, the Alston case is on everyone’s mind, and three colluding conferences on the future of the NCAA in any capacity would be a wake-up call with an impending antitrust dispute. Additionally, 41 schools are involved here, and the association of any formal language would likely create some dissent. If there is no concrete language beyond general agreement to keep talking, support is unanimous. Once the specific language is on a page and signatures are attached, the potential for backfire increases dramatically.

What about the programming of the marquee cross-conferences?

This is clearly the ultimate goal. As Phillips said, “We’re optimistic about the lineup as it will raise the national profile of all of our teams playing coast to coast, with college fans across the country as beneficiaries.” But as for the timeline … no one was going yet. The truth is, we will potentially have to wait years for this to happen. First, the three commissioners have made it clear that they are not going to tear up existing schedule agreements. Because of the way non-conference programming is done, many schools are stuck in games for at least the next five years.

“It’s not about getting out of contracts and blowing up anything,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “It’s about honoring those existing contracts, but also about building relationships between these three like-minded conferences, as we look forward from a planning standpoint to see if there is an opportunity to. create unique games that will come together.

“We’re really in the early stages of this.”

Second, there are still questions about the conference lineup involving the Pac-12 and the Big Ten, who play nine conference games. The ACC currently plays eight. Warren and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said the number of conference games they play should be factored in later.

The third factor here concerns television. Although the commissioners said finances were not the only focus of their alliance, the marquee non-conference games between the teams of the three conferences can only improve their existing and future TV deals, and also allow them to s ‘venture into other areas to gain a foothold with other sources of income. . Raising their national profile is good, but doing so while increasing income is even better, especially as the SEC prepares to move further away from the race for money.

Are conferences aligned with playoff expansion?

They align themselves with being “methodical” in discussions that continue until September, when the PCP board meets again to discuss the proposed expanded 12-team format. Phillips said the ACC does not yet have a position on whether or not to approve the plan, while the Big Ten and Pac-12 remain in favor of the expansion. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they want a vote to approve next month.

The three commissioners spoke at length about the types of discussions that still need to take place and questions that need to be answered – especially since none of them was in the room when the plan was formulated.

The most revealing comment about the playoffs came during a Zoom call the three commissioners had with ESPN after their press conference. “I think people are really focused on being thoughtful and very methodical about this issue,” Warren said. “So I know where the Big Ten is coming from is that we’re still collecting information. We’ll be ready by the time we get into this meeting on September 28th. But I don’t think where we are with the turmoil. that exist in varsity athletics. You know, whatever we’re going forward is going to be a rubber stamp, I think everyone’s going to be looking at their decision-making process with critical eyes. “

“There are still unanswered questions out there,” Phillips said. “And that’s why I don’t think anyone can say definitively, ‘Hey, we’re ready to vote yes or no.'”

What does this mean for the realignment and expansion of the conference?

Kliavkoff has said the Pac-12 will have a decision on whether to continue the expansion by the end of the week, but it seems pretty clear that neither of these conferences will poach league members from each other. . At least not now. While much has been said about the “gentleman’s accord” between the three, Phillips stressed in his remarks that he wants the expansion process to unfold differently across the landscape this time around.

“In the history of varsity athletics, an expansion from one conference has usually led to another,” said Phillips. “For the three of us we felt the stabilization of the current environment through Division I and FBS and Power 5 in particular, it was a chance for a new direction, a new initiative which I think never has been done before, and felt this was the most appropriate step at this time. I think you need to have a group that really understands that expanding doesn’t mean you end up changing your membership to through several conferences in a significant and shortened period of time. “

And what about the rest of the Big 12?

On the one hand, Phillips said about the Big 12: “We want and need the Big 12 to do well. The Big 12 counts in varsity athletics. The Big 12 counts in Power 5 athletics and our FBS group. I can just tell you that we’ll be monitoring what’s going on here. “

So why not include the Big 12 in this new alliance?

“By the time we got together there was a lot of instability,” Phillips said. “Are the Big 12 going to be together? Are they going to join another conference? Are they going to lose members? What’s the end of the game? And I think the three of us feel like we have a stability in our leagues. And that’s what the company, I think, would benefit the most [from]. “

So what does all of this mean? Beyond the platitudes and comments according to which the commissioner of the Big 12, Bob Bowlsby, will understand, the future of the Big 12 remains precarious. No one from the alliance is leaving to join the Big 12. That leaves trying to convince other schools in the group of 5 to join us when their long term futures look bleak at best.